


gonna put you back together

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [92]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Body Horror, Dancing, Dreams, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 09:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26849914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: Here is a thing that Adam Parrish does not know: a week after Joseph Kavinsky goes out in a blaze of hellfire, Ronan dreams him back to life. It's an accident.
Relationships: Joseph Kavinsky/Ronan Lynch
Series: Dark Month Collection [92]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/57298
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	gonna put you back together

**Author's Note:**

> Oct 5th. Prompts were: to dance on one’s grave, chainsaw, body horror, creature, and night sky. I missed a few days over the weekend because it was a really bad weekend. If I have time I'll try to catch up. Anyway, this is almost 2000 words of me still not being over the tragedy of this garbage queer kid killing himself. And yes, I know he's written to be a garbage human being. I can still feel bad about the fact that he effectively killed himself after Ronan told him to get fucked. So I made it even more of a fucked up tragedy.
> 
> Lyrics are from Love Songs, Drug Song by X Ambassadors. Also, [have a playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jWhXYd220j4K3ZgIlCz6w?si=bol-zM5ZTniTi3JsdQwhCA).

Here is a thing that Adam Parrish does not know: a week after Joseph Kavinsky goes out in a blaze of hellfire, Ronan dreams him back to life. It's an accident.

Later, Ronan will only recall the dream in snatches.

The night sky above him, lit by tiny points of glittering white light. A slick, oily substance that seemed like gasoline right up until you tasted it. Fire, creeping in towards him from all sides. And then, like a gift wrapped up in a nightmare, there was _skin_. Heat. Fingers skimming down his sides, just lightly enough to make his skin shiver. A grinning white mouth, all teeth, pressed to the curve of his throat.

“Just the way you like it,” a voice murmured into his ear. The mouth pressed a kiss to his temple; tongued the hinge of his jawline. “Fast and anonymous.”

Ronan gasped, sucked in the fire and oil, choked on it-

When Ronan wakes, he is panting, heart hammering in his chest like he’s just run a marathon. But around him, Monmouth Manufacturing is quiet, the air cool and reassuring. He takes a moment to ground himself in the hum of the air conditioning, the quiet noise of Chainsaw shuffling on her perch. And then he opens his eyes.

His room is black, shapes in the dark that he only knows from memory.

He takes a deep breath, willing his heart quieter, and shifts just enough to roll over-

And there is where his night goes wrong. Because next to him is not the empty stretch of cool sheets that he’d expected. Instead, he encounters warm, solid skin. His heart jumps again, and Ronan stretches, fingers questing- an arm, a shoulder, the broad stretch of a chest.

“Mmm,” a voice murmurs in his ear, sleepy and quiet and _familiar_. “Keep feeling me up like that, Lynch, and I’m gonna have to charge you.” 

Ronan snatches his hand back, recoiling so hard that he nearly goes over the edge of the bed. 

The body shifts, making a noise like a groan as it stretches its arms up over its head, and then it rolls to face him. 

The room is still dark as pitch, but Ronan’s eyes are adjusting. The body is little more than a shapeless silhouette, but turned towards him like this, Ronan can just make out its eyes, glinting in the blackness.

“Kavinsky,” Ronan says, his voice a croak. Kavinsky hums in the back of his throat, shuffling closer so that they’re tucked together like lovers, knees pressed together under the sheets. Fingers touch his cheek, stroking it slowly.

“Lynch,” Kavinsky whispers and leans in further, until he’s got his mouth on Ronan’s throat, just like in the dream.

There’s nowhere else to move. Ronan’s run out of real estate on this bed of his and Kavinsky’s hands are greedy, working their way under the hem of his shirt. Fingers skim low across his belly and Ronan flinches, his body taut, under siege.

He’s hard, Ronan realizes. Has been since he woke up panting with the memory of Kavinsky’s hands on his. And Kavinsky - _Kavinsky_ , who has been in the ground for an entire week - is in his bed, his hands creeping ever downwards-

And that’s enough. That single realization is enough to propel Ronan up and off the bed with a shock. Chainsaw makes a squawk of protest, wings beating the air, and Ronan - he just stands there before the bed, staring.

“You’re dead,” he says quietly. 

Kavinsky - or _not Kavinsky_ , as it were - huffs a sigh and collapses backwards on the bed. 

“Not anymore,” he says with a bored shrug. “Seems it didn’t take.”

“Christ,” Ronan says. And then, “Fuck.”

“I was getting to that,” the thing with Kavinsky’s face says, tone vaguely put out and that’s- it’s too much. Ronan stoops, groping around on his nightstand for the switch to his damn lamp, and suddenly there’s a flurry of movement from the bed before one of Kavinsky's hands catches his, stilling it with a touch.

Ronan stops. The hand on his is cold suddenly, where it had been warm before. There’s something slick and oily running down its wrists, smeared across pale knuckles. The air smells of gasoline - of the promise of fire. 

“Don’t turn on the light,” the creature says, low and threatening.

Ronan swallows. “Why not?”

The hand squeezes and Ronan’s bones give a weak creak of protest. The thing is so close that Ronan can feel it’s breath on his face.

“You never could dream yourself out of a box, Lynch,” Kavinsky says, letting out something of a disgruntled sigh. It drops his hand, and suddenly Ronan can breathe again. “Just trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to see me.”

Ronan licks his lips, staring at the shape in his bed. He still can’t quite make it out, even straining his eyes until they burn. The shape of it is Kavinsky, right down to the narrow wrists, so sharp they could cut you. Ronan takes a seat on the side of the bed. The thing moves, twisting towards him. It watches him in silence for another minute.

“I’m guessing you’re not still down to fuck, then,” it says.

Ronan lets out a quick bark of sound, sharp and mean. Kavinsky lays back down on the bed, pillowing its arms behind its head. It lets out a disappointed little sigh. “Thought not.”

Another moment passes. And then it asks, “Can I see my grave?”

They go to see Kavinsky’s grave. Getting him- it- _whatever_ out of Ronan’s room and down to the car turns out to be more difficult than he would have thought, because every time Ronan turns his back Kavinsky’s creeping down the hallway towards Gansey’s room.

“I just wanted to scare him a bit,” Kavinsky mutters mutinously when he’s packed away into the passenger seat, fingers idly flicking the air vents open and closed repeatedly. Ronan glances away, adjusting his mirror carefully, so there’s not a sliver of Kavinsky’s face showing.

Kavinsky had gotten… twitchy every time that Ronan had nearly caught a glimpse.

The ride to the graveyard is an uncomfortable one, the silence strained between them. It should be familiar. Cars and Kavinsky have always gone together. But it feels wrong to not have him in the space next to Ronan on the road, turning that shit-eating grin out the window of the Mitsubishi, revving his engine. 

Kavinsky clearly must be thinking along the same lines, because he sighs. Out of the corner of his eye, Ronan can see him wilt back against the headrest. 

“I miss driving,” he says, and then-

“Don’t even ask,” Ronan interrupts, not looking at him, but wanting to.

Kavinsky huffs and is quiet for the rest of the drive, staring out the window, the line of his shoulders tense.

The cemetery is quiet. The headstones jut up from the ground in varying sizes, placed in carefully spaced intervals. A few of them have candles lit. Some have fresh flowers, bouquets placed in specially made vases or simply across the grave. Others have flowers in a wide range of decay, from just starting to wilt to withered and brown. More still though, have no flowers at all, the grass overgrown, weeds creeping up the side of the marble.

It’s… sad.

“So,” Kavinsky says from next to him.“Which one is mine?”

Ronan almost looks at him. Almost. He shrugs. “How should I know?”

Kavinsky scoffs. 

“Liar,” he hisses, and goes striding off down the rows of tombstones. Ronan follows. 

Kavinsky’s grave is one of the last ones, pressed up close to the fence line where the trees and bramble have grown tall and unkempt. Kavinsky stops before it, stooping to trace the letters there, index finger curling around the J in Joseph, the B in beloved, the S in son. He makes a small noise in the back of his throat.

“Beloved son,” he says, and Ronan might not be able to see him, but he knows that his lip is curling. 

Ronan says nothing, watching Kavinsky’s shoulders creep higher and higher. When they start shaking, Ronan looks away, watching the night sky instead. The moon is just a thin sliver high in the sky, just like in his dream, right down to the same constellations. 

When Kavinsky stands, Ronan looks at him. He can’t help himself.

Kavinsky was right. Ronan shouldn’t have looked. He tears his gaze away, but it’s too late, Kavinsky’s already seen him looking and his lip is curling up into a nasty sneer that looks wrong on that face.

Because Kavinsky is _almost_ Kavinsky. The shape of his body, from his wrists to his thighs, is exactly as Ronan remembers. 

His face, though, is where Ronan's got it all wrong.

Because Kavinsky’s got _Adam’s_ face. Every single freckle, every single hair. The arch of his eyebrows, the bow of his mouth.

Everything but his eyes. That's the only part of Kavinsky that shines through.

“Told you,” Kavinsky sneers, hooking an arm around Ronan’s and reeling him in as he tries to flinch away. He pulls Ronan close, until they’re tucked together again, pressed tight from chest to thighs. For a moment, he stares Ronan down, as if daring him to look away. That bite is there - that familiar acidity creeping back into his expression. And then, with a strange little sigh, he leans in, settling his cheek against Ronan’s.

“Dance with me,” he whispers, his breath making the hairs on Ronan’s neck stand on end. "C'mon, I've always wanted to dance on my own grave."

“No,” Ronan says back, but it’s a stupid protest really, because they’re already swaying. Just a bit, back and forth. 

Kavinsky’s lips - _Adam’s_ lips - curl into an unmistakable smile against Ronan’s throat.

“Not even when I look like this?”

Ronan swallows.

“Would you prefer I looked like good ole’ Dick? Would that get you going?"

“Shut up, K,” Ronan whispers back, and they’re quiet, swaying back and forth on Kavinsky’s grave.

“Why wasn’t I good enough?” Kavinsky asks him and his voice - it’s softer than it’s ever been in life. More unsure, without the hiss of fire or the reek of gasoline. Like this, he seems more human than he ever has, and Ronan can’t tell if that’s a flaw in the dream’s design or if this Kavinsky had always lurked in the back of the real one’s heart. He finds that he doesn’t really want to know.

So he doesn’t answer, and after a moment, Kavinsky chuckles. 

“Yeah,” he sighs. “That's what I thought.”

Here is a secret that Adam Parrish does not know: that somewhere out there, in this great big world, there is a boy with his face walking around. The boy likes living fast, likes living dangerously, because when you’ve already died once, why worry about the small things?

 _Reality is what other people dream for you_ , he’ll tell anyone who dares to mention his recklessness, a sneer curling at his lips that doesn’t quite match his face. It has the air of a joke, those words. A cruel one, told with a bitter edge, like a line he’s repeated to himself ad nauseam. 


End file.
